“Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.”
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Destiny
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“We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we’re barely pastchildhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.”
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Character
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“People without firmness of character love to make up a “fate” for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having theirown will and of taking responsibility for themselves.”
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Character
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“The only people who treasure systems are those whom the whole truth evades, who want to catch it by the tail. A system is just like truth’s tail, but the truth is like a lizard. It will leave the tail in your hand and escape; it knows that it will soon grow another tail.”
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Truth
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“Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularlyhappy when they don’t notice whether it’s passing quickly or slowly.”
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Happiness
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“Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.”
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Art
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“As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there’s no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better–but you keep working anyway.”
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Art